Social Class Variation Research Articles

Restraint, eating disorders and need to achieve in state and public school subjects

This paper examines the relationship of social class, need to achieve and restraint to attitudes toward food, eating and weight related behaviour. The Binge-eating questionnaire (BEQ), Restraint Scale (RS), Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI) and Achievement Need Questionnaire (ANQ) were administered to 96 state school girls and 88 public school girls. The factor structure of the BEQ, RS and EDI obtained in the present study were compared with subdivisions of the scales suggested by previous studies and revealed a close correspondence. Public school subjects, who were predominantly from social classes 1 and 2, obtained significantly higher scores on the Binge-eating subscale of the BEQ and the Concern with Dieting and Weight Fluctuation subscales of the RS. State school subjects, who were predominantly from social classes, 3, 4 and 5, obtained significantly higher scores on the vomiting subscale of the BEQ and the Maturity Fears and Bulimia subscales of the EDI. There were no significant main effects of achievement need with the exception of the Perfectionism subscale of the EDI and no significant interactions. Possible reasons for the apparent social class variations in eating problems are discussed.

Perinatal outcomes and related factors: social class differences within and between geographical areas.

This paper makes use of the opportunity provided by comparable obstetric data bases to examine area and social class variations in perinatal outcome and associated factors in areas smaller than those usually reported. Analyses are based on singleton births to primiparous residents in the catchment areas of the Aberdeen Maternity and Neonatal Database (n = 4948) and the Cardiff Births Survey (n = 11893) between 1976 and 1981. The factors considered relate to the obstetric population (height, age, and smoking), obstetric practice (induction and assisted delivery), and perinatal outcome (curtailed gestation, low birthweight, and perinatal death). Our analysis confirms the existence of both area and social class differences and suggests that, except in the case of teenage pregnancy and smoking, the association observed between those factors and area and social class are largely independent of each other.

Spina Bifida in Japan 1969‐1975: Geographical and Social Class Variations

Abstract An analysis of 1,103 fetal and postnatal deaths from spina bifida during 1969‐1975 is presented. The overall birth prevalence rate was 0.75 per 10,000 births and was slightly higher in the southwest than in the northeast of Japan. Social class variation in the prevalence rate during the period was studied. Geographical variation in the prevalence rate of spina bifida is not similar to that of anencephaly, whereas the social class variations in the prevalence rate of the two defects are similar.

Social Class Variations in the Decline of Marital Fertility in Late Nineteenth-Century London

—One of the most persistent findings of research on the late nineteenth century fertility transition has been the significance of social class specific patterns. This paper explores this issue by e...

Social Class Variations in the Decline of Marital Fertility in Late Nineteenth-Century London

Social Class Variations in the Decline of Marital Fertility in Late Nineteenth-Century London

Social class, admixture, and skin color variation in Mexican-Americans and Anglo-Americans living in San Antonio, Texas.

Social class may act in different ways as a barrier to gene flow in urban populations, depending on ethnicity. We test the hypothesis that biological variation is affected by social class subdivision using skin reflectance data collected for 393 Anglo-American and 930 Mexican-American adults in the major urban population of San Antonio, Texas. Two socioeconomic groups were sampled for the Anglo-American population: a middle-income transitional group and a high-income suburban group. In addition, we sampled a third socioeconomic group for Mexican-Americans: a low income barrio. Sex and age effects on skin color are minimal. Social class has no effect on skin color variation for Anglo-Americans, whereas there is a highly significant effect on social class subdivision for Mexican-Americans. Admixture estimates were derived from skin reflectance data and show that the proportion of native American ancestry decreases as social class increases.

Analysis of multiple birth rates in Japan. V. Seasonal and social class variations in twin births.

Seasonal variation in twin births was studied in Japan using data on 12,392 pairs of twins in 1974. The highest twinning rates per 1,000 births for MZ (4.56) and DZ (2.20) twins were seen in April, the lowest rate in September (3.69) for MZ twins and in July (1.71) for DZ twins.

Drug Usage and Health Characteristics in Non-Institutionalized Mexican-American Elderly

This paper reports the results of in-depth interviews with thirty-two elderly Mexican-Americans (average age, sixty-nine) with respect to: 1) their total drug usage including prescription, over-the-counter, and social; 2) attitudes towards physicians and medicines; 3) physical health; and 4) the quality of life. The results show that minimal potential hazardous drug interactions were in evidence and, in general, their attitudes towards physicians and the prevalence of chronic illnesses reported were comparable to national Health Interview Surveys and an earlier pilot investigation of elderly Anglo-Americans. In addition, Mexican-Americans show a disinclination to utilize over-the-counter drugs to alleviate minor ailments. Key differences are identified and explained as a result of social class or ethnic variations. The paper concludes that policy makers and professionals involved in health care delivery systems for the aging should become aware of the special needs of different ethnic and socio-economic groups.

Social Class and Criminality

Social class variations in self-reported criminality are examined using data from a comprehensive sample of adults in three states. The results prove to be contrary to any current theories concerning the relationship between social class and deviance, particularly the most popular ones that postulate an inverse relationship between the two. But it is shown that these findings are actually consistent with the bulk of previous research which shows the relationship to be problematic. The extant evidence seems to mandate reconceptualization of theories of deviance to minimize social class as a variable. Social class has always been a fundamental variable in sociological study of crime/delinquency, and practically every theory has given socioeconomic status a prominent explanatory role. Although several patterns of relationship between class and crime have been theorized (Hirschi, b), the most popular explanations assume an inverse relationship between class position and criminality (A. Cohen, a; Gove; Merton; Miller). And despite some skepticism (see Box and Ford; Empey, for summaries), the belief has persisted for a long time that the bulk of evidence actually demonstrates such a relationship (Bytheway and May; Cressey, 157; Rossides, 443; Wheeler, 213). So firm is this belief that at least one recent book has been written to account for the diverse empirical findings that link social inequality and deviant behavior, particularly in American Society (Hewitt, 3). Further, even though some writers, sobered by the results of some self-report studies, are now careful to limit their generalizations to statements about social class and officially recorded crime or delinquency (Cohen and Short, 110-1; Reid, 66-7), confidence that at least that relationship has been established is almost universal (Hood and Sparks, 54). Yet, the literature concerning this issue is unconvincing. For one thing, methodological weaknesses render much of the evidence problematic. Some frequently cited studies report the relationship between class and crime for ecological areas rather than for individuals (Chilton; Lander; Shaw and McKay; Slatin), and several ostensibly relevant investigations have not in fact employed indicators of individual socioeconomic status (B. *This research was supported by NSF Grant GS-31744.

Social Origins of American Scientists and Scholars

Data from a wide variety of sources reflect geographical, baccalaureate, and social class variations in the production of scientific and scholarly doctorates in the United States. To a significant extent, these variations are associated with the kind of religiousethnic group from which such persons come. Roman Catholics are extremely low producers of scientists and scholars, but fundamentalistic and traditional Protestant faiths (southern white Protestants, Lutherans) are also low producers. Liberal Protestant sects, such as Unitarians and Quakers, and secularized Jewish groups are highly productive, and less liberal faiths are moderately productive. Variations in productivity are reflective of differences in beliefs and values. Highly productive groups share a certain set of values, unproductive groups hold the antithesis of these, and those groups intermediate in productivity possess a mixed blend. Tentatively, the common beliefs and value systems of high producers seem to include naturalism; intrinsic valuation of learning and the individual quest for truth; emphasis on human dignity, goodness, and competence; a life pathway of serious dedication, of service to humanity, of continual striving; humanistic equalitarianism; a pragmatic search for better ways of doing things unfettered by traditional restraints; and a focus on the relatively immediate, foreseeable future which can be affected by personal effort. Historically, the scientists (or their immediate ancestors) have broken away from the traditional orthodoxy, broadened certain values, and retained others. For example, the children of Jewish immigrants to the United States departed from the traditional ritualism of the eastern European Jewish community, broadened the old value of scriptural erudition to include secular learning of all kinds, but maintained emphasis upon personal striving and social responsibility. Also, it appears that eminent scientists often emerge from devout Protestant homes emphasizing learning and responsibility but that such scientists frequently depart from the parental religious faith (31). Psychodynamically, this set of cultural values produces a person with an inquiring cognitive disposition, whose duty it is to strive diligently to improve the human condition. Given a certain level of intellectual talent, and cultural support in educational, scientific, and scholarly institutions, youth will frequently choose careers in scientific and scholarly professions. This same cultural milieu apparently also produces disproportionate numbers of inventors and entrepreneurs; historically, it produced those who activated the industrial revolution and those who generally were responsible for rapid economic growth. The data discussed herein extend only to about 1960, prior to the great social unrest of the 1960's and early 1970's. Speculatively, one might predict that productivity will diminish to the extent that current social movements stressing existential futility, goal attainment "now," or power relationships are successful in penetrating groups which have been highly productive, since these emphases undermine longterm scholarly striving.

Solar Heating and Cooling

Data from a wide variety of sources reflect geographical, baccalaureate, and social class variations in the production of scientific and scholarly doctorates in the United States. To a significant extent, these variations are associated with the kind of religiousethnic group from which such persons come. Roman Catholics are extremely low producers of scientists and scholars, but fundamentalistic and traditional Protestant faiths (southern white Protestants, Lutherans) are also low producers. Liberal Protestant sects, such as Unitarians and Quakers, and secularized Jewish groups are highly productive, and less liberal faiths are moderately productive. Variations in productivity are reflective of differences in beliefs and values. Highly productive groups share a certain set of values, unproductive groups hold the antithesis of these, and those groups intermediate in productivity possess a mixed blend. Tentatively, the common beliefs and value systems of high producers seem to include naturalism; intrinsic valuation of learning and the individual quest for truth; emphasis on human dignity, goodness, and competence; a life pathway of serious dedication, of service to humanity, of continual striving; humanistic equalitarianism; a pragmatic search for better ways of doing things unfettered by traditional restraints; and a focus on the relatively immediate, foreseeable future which can be affected by personal effort. Historically, the scientists (or their immediate ancestors) have broken away from the traditional orthodoxy, broadened certain values, and retained others. For example, the children of Jewish immigrants to the United States departed from the traditional ritualism of the eastern European Jewish community, broadened the old value of scriptural erudition to include secular learning of all kinds, but maintained emphasis upon personal striving and social responsibility. Also, it appears that eminent scientists often emerge from devout Protestant homes emphasizing learning and responsibility but that such scientists frequently depart from the parental religious faith (31). Psychodynamically, this set of cultural values produces a person with an inquiring cognitive disposition, whose duty it is to strive diligently to improve the human condition. Given a certain level of intellectual talent, and cultural support in educational, scientific, and scholarly institutions, youth will frequently choose careers in scientific and scholarly professions. This same cultural milieu apparently also produces disproportionate numbers of inventors and entrepreneurs; historically, it produced those who activated the industrial revolution and those who generally were responsible for rapid economic growth. The data discussed herein extend only to about 1960, prior to the great social unrest of the 1960's and early 1970's. Speculatively, one might predict that productivity will diminish to the extent that current social movements stressing existential futility, goal attainment "now," or power relationships are successful in penetrating groups which have been highly productive, since these emphases undermine long longterm scholarly striving.

Social class variations in health care and in the nature of general practitioner consultations.

Social class variations in health care and in the nature of general practitioner consultations.

Aspirations and Expectations of West Malaysian Youth: Two Models of Social Class Values

A LARGE BODY Of literature on social stratification has stressed the negative influence of low social class background on shaping the educational and occupational expectations of high school students in the United States. Many empirical studies have indicated that categorizing students by social background variables reveals significantly different patterns of expectations regarding future status even when academic achievement and intelligence scores are controlled.2 In these studies, social class origin is often assumed to represent a cluster of social-cultural factors which affects the formation of different levels of educational and occupational expectations of high school students along the lines of social class stratification in this society. These differing levels of expectations are assumed to lead to a differentiation of the educational (and thus, future occupational) careers of students of low social class background from others of comparable levels of ability and academic achievement-but of higher social class origin. As was pointed out recently by Wan Sang Han,3 many of those who have reported on social-class variations in expectations for the future are often assuming the existence of class-based differences in the valuation of success. Such authors seem to assume that individuals of low social class background are socially non-mobile due to their low valuation of achievement and this is reflected in their relatively modest expectations for upward social mobility. Han perceived that this assumption is incongruent with the alternative assumption, made by Robert K. Merton, Talcott Parsons, and others, that Americans in general value success-irrespective of social class status. In fact, Merton's famous theory of deviance makes this fundamental assumption. According to Merton's model, deviance in American society is basically attributable to the discrepancy between the

Class, Family, and Schizophrenia: A Reformulation

The proposed formulation attempts to bring genetics, stress, and the conditions of life attendant on social-class position into one coherent interpretation of schizophrenia. The thrust of the argument is that the conditions of life experienced by people of lower social-class position tend to impair their ability to deal resourcefully with the problematic and the stressful. Such impairment would probably result in schizophrenia only for people who are both genetically vulnerable and exposed to considerable stressbut these conditions, too, may impinge with special severity on people in the lowest social classes. A multitude of studies carried out in several countries consistently suggests that schizophrenia1 occurs most frequently at the lowest socialclass levels of urban society. Reviews and assessments of this research literature by the Dohrenwends (1969), Kohn (1968), Mishler and Scotch (1963), and Roman and Trice (1967), all come to the same conclusion: despite serious shortcomings in the research, the weight of evidence clearly points to an especially high rate of schizophrenia at the bottom of the social-class hierarchy.2 What is not clear is why class is related to schizophrenia. Discussions of the class-schizophrenia relationship have generally focused on interpretations that, in effect, explain away its theoretical significance. Some argue that the statistical relationship between social class and rates of schizophrenia is only artifactual, the result of methodological error.3 Others accept the statistical relationship as real, but assert that schizophrenics are found disproportionately in lower social classes (or in declining occupations or in central city areas) because of the impairment they have suffered or because of some charac* Revised version of a paper presented at the Seventh World Congress of Sociology, Varna, Bulgaria, September 1970. 1 The classic definition of schizophrenia (Bleuler, 1950:14) considers it to be a group of disorders whose fundamental symptoms consist of disturbances of association and affectivity, the predilection for fantasy as against reality, and the inclination to divorce oneself from reality. In common with most American investigators, I use the term broadly, to refer to those severe functional disorders marked by disturbances in reality relationships and concept formation (cf. Rosenbaum, 1970: 3-16). Unfortunately, available research evidence does not enable me to differentiate clinical subtypes of schizophrenia or to make such important distinctions as that between process and reactive forms of disturbance (cf. Garmezy, 1965). 2 The cited works provide references to virtually all studies of class and schizophrenia published through 1968. The evidence comes from research conducted in Canada, Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United States-an unusually large number of countries and cultures for establishing the generality of any relationship in social science. Moreover, the exceptions are few and partial: they occur in small cities and rural areas or in special subpopulations of larger cities; none contradicts the larger generalization of an especially high rate of schizophrenia at the lowest social-class levels of urban populations. Judging from data about patients newly admitted to psychiatric treatment (e.g., Hollingshead and Redlich, 1958:236), the incidence of schizophrenia is approximately three or four times as great at the bottom of the class hierarchy as at the top. One unresolved issue is whether the relationship of class to schizophrenia is linear or is discontinuous, with an especially high rate in the lowest social class but little variation above that level (cf. Kohn, 1968:157; Rushing, 1969). I have attempted to make my formulation consistent with either possibility. 3 The principal issues are the adequacy of indices, the completeness of the search procedures used, and the relative merits and defects of incidence and prevalence as statistical measures. I (1968) have discussed these issues in an earlier paper.

Sex and Social Class Variations in Black Aged Parent-Adult Child Relationships

Sex and Social Class Variations in Black Aged Parent-Adult Child Relationships

Social Class Variations in Psychiatric Referral of Withdrawn and Aggressive Case Descriptions

Social Class Variations in Psychiatric Referral of Withdrawn and Aggressive Case Descriptions

Social Class Variations in Psychiatric Referral of Withdrawn and Aggressive Case Descriptions

One hundred couples from the working and middle classes were asked to assess two fictitious case descriptions of an aggressive “spouse” and a withdrawn “spouse.” Only weak correlations appeared between estimates of deviance (unusualness and incompatibility) and predictions of psychiatric referral. However, the assignment of high accountability to the aggressive case strengthened the deviance-referral relationship, reflecting greater middle-class opposition to unusualness and greater working-class opposition to incompatibility. The observed positive contribution of high assignments of accountability to the referral decision suggests that under specifiable conditions the public may expect the psychiatrist to serve as a practicing moralist rather than a value-neutral physician.

The epidemiology of mental illness in an English city

A register of adult patients from Salford, England (population 150,000) who came into any form of special psychiatric care was maintained from 1959 to 1963. — Those seeking psychiatric care for the first time in their lives were classed as inceptions (1,945 cases). — Inception rates were calculated for the population at risk. The effects of sex, age, marital state and social class were considered for all cases and for those in specific diagnostic categories. — Considering all categories of mental illness, women had higher rates than men, but only up to the 60's. Both sexes showed an early peak in the 30's then a decline, followed by a rise beginning in the 60's and climbing steeply at older ages. The married had lower rates of inceptions than did the single, widowed or divorced. Persons in the unskilled manual labourer class had higher rates than other occupational categories. — Schizophrenia, as expected, had higher rates among the young, among men, among the single, and among the unskilled. — Depressive psychosis was nearly twice as common in women as in men. Although the married had the lowest rates of depressive psychosis among marital categories, the differences were not as marked as for schizophrenia, nor were the differences in rates for the social classes remarkable. Nothing to suggest the existence of involutional melancholia was found in the inception rates. Attention is drawn to the bimodal age curve for depressive psychosis, and its possible implications for the definition of the syndrome and its causes. — Psychoneurosis was the largest diagnostic category up to 40 years in both sexes, and then declined in numbers. Women, and especially single women, had higher rates than men. No social class variation in psychoneurosis was discovered. — Epidemiological features of psychopathy, addictive disorders, senile psychosis, organic disorders and epilepsy are also presented. — Comparisons are made with Lundby, Sweden and New Haven, Connecticut. The Salford rates fall between these two. — The age distributions of inceptions of schizophrenia and psychoneurosis are compared with that of Huntington's chorea. The resemblance is great, and these data therefore provoke serious consideration of the existence of genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia and psychoneurosis, although there are good reasons for seeking multiple causes including social causes.

Social class variations in mortality.

Social class variations in mortality.

Social Class Variations in Mortality [Summary

Social Class Variations in Mortality [<i>Summary</i>